For those who are home, and for those who are on the way. For those who support the historic and just return of the land of Israel to its people, forever loyal to their inheritance, and its restoration.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

For years, we Israelis have been subjected to the terrorist threats and attacks of the jihadist regime of the Mullahs of Teheran and their agents in Hamas and Hizbullah. The Iranian ambitions always extended beyond this tiny country, and now - finally - its extent is front-page news throughout the world today.

Secret American intelligence assessments have concluded that Iran has obtained a cache of advanced missiles, based on a Russian design, that are much more powerful than anything Washington has publicly conceded that Tehran has in its arsenal, diplomatic cables show. Iran obtained 19 of the missiles from North Korea, according to a cable dated Feb. 24 of this year. The cable is a detailed, highly classified account of a meeting between top Russian officials and an American delegation led by Vann H. Van Diepen, an official with the State Department’s nonproliferation division who, as a national intelligence officer several years ago, played a crucial role in the 2007 assessment of Iran’s nuclear capacity. The missiles could for the first time give Iran the capacity to strike at capitals in Western Europe or easily reach Moscow, and American officials warned that their advanced propulsion could speed Iran’s development of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Iran's Moslem cousins have known this and more for a long time. They, more than almost anyone except perhaps the Israeli government, have been anxiously lobbying for the power of the jihadists in Teheran to be curtailed - one way or (ahem) another.

The Western-backed ruling Fatah faction in the West Bank has just concluded its fifth convention in Ramallah with a series of statements that will make it virtually impossible for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to reach a deal with Israel that includes any compromises.

A statement issued by the Fatah Revolutionary Council, which consists of more than 100 Fatah officials, said no to almost every proposal or idea that could have paved the way for some kind of a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

No to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state; no to any solution that calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders; no to the idea of a land swap between Israel and the Palestinians; no to any resuming peace talks with Israel unless construction in settlements and east Jerusalem is halted; no to understandings between Israel and the US regarding the future of the peace process; no to supplying Israel with US weapons; no to recognizing the Western Wall's significance to Jews and not to a new Israeli law that requires a referendum before any withdrawal from Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

With a position like this, it is hard to see how any progress could be achieved when and if the peace talks ever resume. What Fatah is actually saying is that Israel must accept 100% of our demands if it wants peace. This is the only "yes" that Fatah had to offer.

The Fatah statement should not come as a surprise to anyone: this has in fact always been the faction's position, especially since the beginning of the peace process with Israel. Fatah has actually been consistent in its policy and its positions have not changed over the past two decades.

The classified diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks are the Pentagon Papers of the pro-Israel right

Lee Smith
Tablet Magazine
29 November '10

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has positioned himself as a left-wing whistleblower whose life mission is to call the United States to task for the evil it has wreaked throughout the world. But after poring through the diplomatic cables revealed via the site yesterday, one might easily wonder if Assange isn’t instead a clandestine agent of Dick Cheney and Bibi Netanyahu; whether his muckraking website isn’t part of a Likudnik plot to provoke an attack on Iran; and if PFC Bradley Manning, who allegedly uploaded 250,000 classified documents to Wikileaks, is actually a Lee Harvey Oswald-like neocon patsy.

With all due apologies to Oliver Stone (and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey), what the Wikileaks documents reveal is not a conspiracy of any kind but a scary and growing gap between the private assessments of American diplomats and allies in the Middle East and public statements made by U.S. government officials. The publication of these leaked cables is eerily reminiscent of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed a decade-long attempt by U.S. officials to distort and conceal unpalatable truths about the Vietnam War, and manipulate public opinion. The difference is that while the Pentagon Papers substantially vindicated the American left, the Wikileaks cable dump vindicates the right.

Here are eight of the most obvious examples from the initial trove of documents that has appeared online:

1. While the Israelis are deeply concerned about Iran’s march toward a nuclear program, it is in fact the Arabs who are begging the United States to “take out” Iranian installations through military force, with one United Arab Emirates official even proposing a ground invasion. Calling Iran “evil,” King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly urged the United States to “cut off the head of the snake” by attacking Iranian nuclear installations.

The Wikileaks could be a beneficial revelation, a turning point, changing Western perceptions of the Middle East.

After all, only the leak of U.S. secret documents is forcing--finally!--the mass media to recognize that its entire model of the Middle East has been wrong. For years, we have been told that the region revolves around the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And that was to some extent true up through the end of the 1980s. But now the Middle East revolves around the battle between Islamists and nationalists, and especially between the Iran-led bloc (Iran, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas, Iraqi insurgents, the government that rules Turkey) and most of the other countries.

Here's how the New York Times put it in an article:

"The cables reveal how Iran’s ascent has unified Israel and many longtime Arab adversaries — notably the Saudis — in a common cause. Publicly, these Arab states held their tongues, for fear of a domestic uproar and the retributions of a powerful neighbor. Privately, they clamored for strong action — by someone else.

"If they seemed obsessed with Iran, though, they also seemed deeply conflicted about how to deal with it — with diplomacy, covert action or force. In one typical cable, a senior Omani military officer is described as unable to decide what is worse: `A strike against Iran’s nuclear capability and the resulting turmoil it would cause in the Gulf, or inaction and having to live with a nuclear-capable Iran.'”

An editorial in today's Jerusalem Post, which describes the uncompromising positions staked by Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party at its recent convention, argues that the media's indifference to the group's intransigence betrays readers and perpetuates prejudice. Below is an excerpt. You can read the whole thing here.

THE FATAH council’s articulation of such an extremist position has far-reaching ramifications for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. That’s why Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh’s report on the council’s decisions appeared at the top of this newspaper’s front page on Sunday.

By bizarre contrast, the vast majority of local and international news outlets have so far refrained from reporting at all on Fatah’s hard-line declarations. While news media usually respond quickly and amply to steps taken by Israel that are perceived as potentially detrimental to the peace process, the silent treatment of the Fatah decisions reflects a media norm, in which Palestinian incitement and intransigence is often downplayed or completely ignored.

The WikiLeaks documents have multiple ramifications, but I will focus on one: the confirmation that the Obama “linkage” argument was pure bunk. Recall that the Obama team over and over again has made the argument that progress on the Palestinian conflict was essential to obtaining the help of the Arab states in confronting Iran’s nuclear threat. We know that this is simply and completely false.

The documents show that the Arab states were hounding the administration to take action against Iran. The King of Bahrain urged Obama to rec0gnize that the danger of letting the Iranian nuclear program come to fruition was worse than the fallout from stopping it. He wasn’t alone: there was also “King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who according to another cable repeatedly implored Washington to ‘cut off the head of the snake’ while there was still time.” The New York Times connects some of the dots:

At the same time, the cables reveal how Iran’s ascent has unified Israel and many longtime Arab adversaries — notably the Saudis — in a common cause. Publicly, these Arab states held their tongues, for fear of a domestic uproar and the retributions of a powerful neighbor. Privately, they clamored for strong action — by someone else. …

Crown Prince bin Zayed [of Abu Dhabi], predicting in July 2009 that an Israeli attack could come by year’s end, suggested the danger of appeasing Iran. “Ahmadinejad is Hitler,” he declared.

Seemingly taken aback, a State Department official replied, “We do not anticipate military confrontation with Iran before the end of 2009.”

Ed Morrissey writes at Hot Air about another attempt to delay Iran's acquisition of nuclear power--killing their scientists:

Fresh off the revelation that Iran’s Sunni neighbors urged the US to attack Iran and decapitate its regime, two bombs targeting scientists in Iran’s nuclear program killed one and wounded another today in separate but apparently linked blasts. These attacks follow earlier apparent assassinations that killed two other researchers in their nuclear program. The Iranians, however, have chosen not to blame its neighbors but instead put the blame on Israel

Just 24 hours ago, Israel would have been the logical choice.

Of course, in the aftermath of the Wikileaks revelations, it has now been confirmed that the Arab world in general is anxious about Iran's plans. If anything, considering how little impact the murder of the scientist is likely to have on Iran's program, it is more likely that one of Iran's neighbors is behind the bombing.

I am surprised that some Jews are surprised at Khaled Abu Toameh’s report that “Jews have no right to Western Wall, PA 'study' says”. That study, published by PA Ministry of Information claims that the “Al-Buraq Wall”, constitutes:

"Waqf property owned by an Algerian-Moroccan Muslim family…and is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-Sharif [the Noble Sanctuary]…The new paper claims that the Western Wall, or Al-Buraq Wall as it is known to Muslims, constitutes Waqf property owned by an Algerian-Moroccan Muslim family."

In 1947 the British put the future of western Palestine into the hands of the United Nations, the successor organization to the League of Nations which had established the Mandate for Palestine. A UN Commission recommended partitioning what was left of the original Mandate - western Palestine - into two new states, one Jewish and one Arab. Jerusalem and its surrounding villages were to be temporarily classified as an international zone belonging to neither polity.

What resulted was Resolution 181 [known as the 1947 Partition Plan], a non-binding recommendation to partition Palestine, whose implementation hinged on acceptance by both parties - Arabs and Jews. The Arab nations, including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia denounced the plan on the General Assembly floor and voted as a bloc against Resolution 181 promising to defy its implementation by force.

The resolution recognized the need for immediate Jewish statehood (and a parallel Arab state), but the 'blueprint' for peace became a moot issue when the Arabs refused to accept it. Subsequently, de facto [In Latin: realities] on the ground in the wake of Arab aggression (and Israel's survival) became the basis for UN efforts to bring peace. Resolution 181 then lost its validity and relevance.

Aware of Arabs' past aggression, Resolution 181, in paragraph C, calls on the Security Council to:

"Determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution." [italics by author]

The ones who sought to alter by force the settlement envisioned in Resolution 181 were the Arabs who threatened bloodshed if the United Nations was to adopt the Resolution:

Israel was a sideshow in the latest WikiLeaks document dump, but the leaked cables did include one noteworthy nugget from Jerusalem: in January 2007, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who today is leader of the opposition, told two U.S. senators that following some exploratory talks with the Palestinians, she didn’t believe a final-status agreement could be reached with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

This is significant because publicly, Livni always says a peace deal is achievable and lambastes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his failure to produce one. Even yesterday, confronted with the WikiLeaks cable, she continued this line, insisting that a deal wasn’t achievable in 2007, but in 2010 “a peace agreement is possible and it needs to done.”

She didn’t explain this about-face, for the very good reason that no convincing explanation exists: Abbas is no more willing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, agree to defensible borders, or cede the “right of return” than he ever was. But this mantra has paid off for her politically, making her the West’s favorite Israeli.

A politician being hypocritical for political gain is nothing new. But in this case, Livni’s personal gain has come at the price of grave damage to her country. If a leading Israeli politician — the woman whose party won the most seats in the last election — claims that Abbas is ready to make a deal, that obviously carries weight overseas. But if Abbas is indeed ready to deal, then it’s clearly Israel’s fault that no deal has ever been signed. And so Israel is painted worldwide as the obstacle to peace, with all the opprobrium that entails.

Iranian-style rhetoric from Turkey, from Ma'ariv, translated by Islamo-nazism blog:

Turkey – “Israel will not be able to remain over time an independent country, and a bi-national state will be established on all of the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River in which Jews and Palestinians will live,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in a number of meetings that he held with journalists and academics, including a number of Israeli academics. Davutoglu’s vision, which he revisited a number of times, is for Turkey to become a dominant force in the Middle East and further, that it will be the protector state of the above-cited bi-national state within a number of years.

Davutoglu, a professor of international relations, is considered to be the principal ideologue of the AKP, the party that is headed by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In the course of the meetings with academics and journalists, which were held prior to the eruption of the recent crisis between Turkey and Israel in the aftermath of the flotilla to the Gaza Strip and the killing of nine Turkish nationals on board the Mavi Marmara, Davutoglu said he did not believe that Israel would be able to sign peace agreements with its neighbors, including the state that is to be formed in the area of the Palestinian Authority.

The central idea that was put forward by Davutoglu, which he has been trying to promote by means of a number of journalists and Turkish government officials, is that Israel as an independent state is illegitimate in the region and, as such, is destined to disappear. That assessment is rooted in a deeper ideology that aspires to restore to Turkey the historic influence it wielded during the era of the Ottoman empire, which ruled the Middle East for close to 400 years. Davutoglu said on a number of occasions that he believed that peace would be restored to the Middle East only in the wake of deep and substantial Turkish intervention.

The Obama team keeps insisting that the “problem” in the non-direct, non-peace talks (it has been two months since the last talks, and no one but the Obama administration seems all that concerned) is Israel settlements and hence has been pursuing a policy first of threats and now of bribes to induce Israel to stop building homes for Jews. But, alas, reality intrudes, and it is obvious to all but the Obami that the problem is much more fundamental. This report explains:

The Fatah Revolutionary Council concluded its fifth convention in Ramallah over the weekend by declaring its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The council also urged the Palestinian Authority leadership to work toward foiling a new Israeli law requiring a referendum before any withdrawal from Jerusalem and the Golan Heights that has not been passed by two thirds of the Knesset. …

“The council affirms its rejection of the so-called Jewish state or any other formula that could achieve this goal,” said a statement issued by the council.
“The council also renews its refusal for the establishment of any racist state based on religion in accordance with international law and human rights conventions.”

Monday, November 29, 2010

The secret US' Embassy cables are now available on Wikileaks. While the debate goes on about the legitimacy of this leak, the information is out there. The sheer volume of this information (250,000 cables) makes it hard to comprehend. For your convenience here are those cables relevant to the main issues in the Middle East. This post will be updated over the next few days.

Iran:

July 2008 - Mubarak's top concern for the stability of Iraq and the region is Iran. He believes that "as a result of the invasion of Iraq, Iran is spreading everywhere." Mubarak calls Iranians "big fat liars" and say they sponsor terrorism. He said he believes this opinion is shared by other leaders in the region. Yet he opined that no Arab state would join the U.S. in a formal defense alliance against Iran for fear of retaliation.

Oct 2008 - Iran used the Iranian Red Crescent (IRC) to smuggle agents and weapons into other countries. The IRC facilitated the entry of Qods force officers to Lebanon during the Israel-Hezbollah war in summer 2006. IRC shipments of medical supplies served also to facilitate weapons shipments.

March 2009 - Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) expressed his grave concerns about the Iranian threat to the region. He claimed Iranian leadership is concerned that dialogue with the West represents a regime threat, and that Iran would obtain a nuclear weapon unless the regime could be "split from inside" before nuclear capability was achieved.

Please forgive me for saying this, but what really amazed me in reading the Wikileaks was how thoroughly they proved points I’ve been making for years. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to say that except that readers have been telling me the same thing.

1. Iran steadily smuggled arms to Hizballah using various means including in ambulances and medical vehicles during the 2006 war. This violates the laws of war. At times, the media has condemned Israel for attacking ambulances though it showed Hamas was also using such vehicles for military and arms-smuggling operations. Moreover, the postwar UN force proved consistently ineffective in stopping smuggling while the U.S. government did not denounce Iran, Syria, and Hizballah for breaking the ceasefire arrangements.

2. Israeli leaders have repeatedly made clear in diplomatic discussions their acceptance of a two-state solution but warned that the Palestinian leadership sought Israel’s destruction.

3. Arab states have constantly been warning the United States about the threat from Iran as their highest priority, even urging the United States to attack Iran itself. Note that Arab leaders did not condition their oppositon to Iran or call for a U.S. attack on settling the Arab-Israeli or Israel-Palestinian conflicts. This is contrary to what Administration officials, academia, and parts of the mass media who argue these issues are basically linked and that is why the conflicts must be "solved" before doing much else. As I've told you, the Arab regimes worry first and foremost about Iran and have greatly downgraded their interest in the conflict or antagonism toward Israel.

The next time you come across an Electronic Intifada article alleging some devious Israeli plot to annex Palestinian olive groves, direct your eye-rolls toward The Hague. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Dutch government may have been unwittingly helping to finance the radical anti-Israel website for years.

The Post reported Friday that the Electronic Intifada is funded by the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation, which is apparently being subsidized quite heavily by the Dutch government and the European Union:

The Dutch government has been funding the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation, a Dutch aid organization that finances the Electronic Intifada website that, NGO Monitor told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, is anti-Semitic and frequently compares Israeli policies with those of the Nazi regime.

NGO Monitor’s exposure of Dutch government funding for the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO) prompted Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal to say on Thursday, “I will look into the matter personally. If it appears that the government subsidized NGO ICCO does fund Electronic Intifada, it will have a serious problem with me.”

The Post reports that the Dutch government provided €124 million to the ICCO in 2008, which the NGO Monitor says makes up 90 percent of the group’s budget. The European Union reportedly contributed another 6 percent.

While the outcome still isn’t clear, it seems that a new example of failure and humiliation is unfolding for the Obama Administration’s Middle East policy.

It appears increasingly unlikely that the president’s high-profile effort to restart Israel-Palestinian talks will succeed during the remainder of 2010 or even well beyond that time.

This Administration has had a very clear idea of what it wanted to achieve:

1. A comprehensive Israel-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli peace.

2. Getting rid of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the belief that this will reduce terrorism and strengthen US power in region and US interests.

3. Getting rid of the conflict to get Arab support on Iraq, Iran, and Aghanistan.

The embarrassment is taking place due to faulty assumptions about these goals and how to achieve them:

--That a high-profile effort would serve U.S. interests. By showing American engagement on the issue, the Administration thought it would please Arab and Muslim-majority countries so as to gain their support on other issues. This didn’t work.

--That, at best, a high-profile campaign would be likely to succeed in bringing rapid progress toward comprehensive peace. That obviously isn’t working.

It didn’t get nearly as much play as it should have, but Obama’s June 2009 meeting with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah ended with the monarch flying into a tirade and more or less telling the President to get a grip. This was the Riyadh meeting that Obama took on his way to his insulting and failed Cairo Speech, the better to prepare himself by visiting “the place where Islam began.” The sit-down was such a disaster that Dennis Ross was hurriedly brought into the White House and given a broader role, yielding the impression that the President wanted a Middle East adviser who kind of understood something about the Middle East – and didn’t think he had one.

There were two theories on why the meeting went so badly.

On one side you had typical left-leaning foreign policy experts, the ones who had been advising Obama from the beginning and who now needed to explain why things turned out the opposite of how they predicted. Their approach to the Middle East is grounded in the two dogmas of anti-Israel foreign policy sophistication: (a) linkage, according to which Middle East pathologies are a result of the unresolved Arab/Israeli conflict rather than vice versa and (b) “if only Israel would…,” according to which the Arab/Israel conflict could be resolved were Israel to offer more concessions. They had promised that an “even-handed approach” to the Middle East that “put daylight” between the US and Israel would lead to Israeli gestures, at which point Arab regimes would reciprocate. Nothing of the sort came out of the Riyadh meeting. Instead of admitting that they had somehow gotten Saudi priorities or intentions wrong, that crowd doubled down and insisted that the Saudis cared so much about the Palestinians that Obama needed to put even more pressure on Israel to bring around Arab countries.

When a group of tattooed professional Jewish and non-Jewish graffiti artists from around the world descended on the quaint biblical city of Beit El, Israel National News TV's "Eye on Zion" was there! Watch as the unorthodox - and staunchly pro-Israel - 'Artists 4 Israel' transform a children's play center into a symbol of Zionism and Jewish pride.

In the wake of the Wikileaks revelation that Iranian Red Crescent planes sent to Hezbollah during the Lebanon war were "half filled" with missiles, one may wonder how many planes are we talking about?

One hint: The war lasted from July 12 to August 14. Here is a report from Radio Free Europe from August 1:

The fifth consignment of Iranian aid destined for Lebanon arrived in Damascus on July 23, IRNA reported. The two aircraft carrying medicine and medical equipment from the Red Crescent Society came on the heels of four other aid shipments, Iranian Charge d'Affaires in Syria Ghazanfar Roknabadi said.

If there were two planeloads in each consignment, and the fifth one was on July 23rd, that averages out to roughly a planeload a day.

On a recent speaking tour in Montreal and Toronto, I was struck by the beleaguered state of many Canadian Jews.

They were battling the usual mad barrage against Israel from the media, politicians on the left and rabid anti-Israel and Judeophobic lies and libels on campus.

Home from home, in other words.

But perhaps the most troubling aspect was that they appeared not to possess the verbal ammunition with which to respond.

It seemed to me that, as I wrote here last month, the problem was that to a greater or lesser extent they themselves had been sucked into the narrative of lies.

Because so many were centrist or liberally-minded folk, they accepted a premise they quite mistakenly thought represented the ‘centre ground’.

That premise was that the settlements were the big problem. That inevitably paints Israel as the bad guy in the region. So these Israel defenders are forced onto the defensive. And once there, the argument is all but lost.

But as I put to them, Israel has actually done nothing to be defensive about. It is instead Israel’s attackers who are murderous aggressors who refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state, even though settlements have been evacuated and territory offered up as a compromise.

So I suggested they should rethink their entire approach. Change the narrative. Get off the back foot and put Israel’s attackers onto theirs.

A heavily redacted memo in Wikileaks as presented by The Guardian shows that Iran has cynically used its Red Crescent to smuggle weapons -including missiles - and agents into Lebanon during the 2006 war as well as elsewhere.

8. (S) Per the IRC's regulations, following his election in 2005, President Ahmadi-Nejad was able to appoint four members (out of 16) of the IRC management group. These four [NAMES REMOVED] were opposed to the IRC's leadership and eventually requested its president, Dr. Ahmad Ali Noorbala, to resign. [DETAILS REMOVED] He did so in January 2006 [DETAILS REMOVED] Most of the incoming managers were members of the IRGC or the MOIS [Iranian Intelligence Agency]. [NAME REMOVED] said that pre-existing members now considered the IRC an agent of the IRGC. [Iranian Republican Guard]

9. (S) [NAME REMOVED] further elaborated on the presence of MOIS officials in the IRC and other government agencies. All government agencies include an MOIS representative [DETAILS REMOVED] [NAME REMOVED] Prior to Ahmadi-Nejad, the IRC official in this position was the sole MOIS representative; afterwards, [NAME REMOVED] said 40 officers at headquarters and 100 officers at the provincial officers came from the MOIS.

10. (S) [DETAILS REMOVED] in line with Ahmadinejad's government-wide directive, that all employees pass a counterintelligence course. [NAME REMOVED] indicated that such a course violated the principles of the IRC because Red Cross/Red Crescent organizations are supposed to be independent from the state.

11. (S) In addition to the personnel moves, [DETAILS REMOVED] The IRC under Dr. Noorbala had resisted the IRGC's request to take responsibility for relief and rescue operations. [DETAILS REMOVED] the IRGC's Basij forces to assume responsibility for relief and rescue. [DETAILS REMOVED]

November 25th marked six months since Harriet Sherwood’s arrival in Jerusalem to take up her new role as the Guardian’s foreign correspondent in Israel. This presents an appropriate opportunity to review her performance so far and determine whether she has lived up to her own expectations as set out in three ‘mission statement’ articles she wrote before and after her arrival.

In an article from 2006 Sherwood, whilst filling the role of Foreign Editor at the Guardian, laid out her vision for reporting from Jerusalem, stating that

“The first thing we need to be absolutely sure of is the purpose of our news reporting from the region. Our correspondents are there to give our readers accurate information about Israel-Palestine. We are not there to bat for one side or the other, but to report on the situation on the ground as we find it.”

“We should aim for balance in our overall coverage, not in each individual story; it’s the batting average that counts.”

On June 14th 2010 Sherwood once again wrote about her aspirations; this time from the point of view of a foreign correspondent on the ground:

The headline and lead paragraph of Jerusalem correspondent Janine Zacharia's Nov. 27 article might lead readers of the Washington Post to believe that they're about to find out why many in the aviation industry consider Israel's screening of passengers the gold standard in airport security measures. ("Israeli air security is easy on most, intrusive for a few" page A7).

But they would be wrong. Because, it turns out, the bulk of her article is a full-bore attack on Israel's profiling methods, including special scrutiny of Arab travelers..

The result of such profiling, Zacharia reports, is that most travelers pass through airport security with "relative ease." "But," she emphasizes, and this is the real purport of her story, "But Israeli personnel do single out small numbers of passengers for extensive searches and screening, based on profiling methods that have so far been rejected in the United States, subjecting Arabs and, in some cases, other foreign nationals to an extensive screening that comes with a deep civil liberties price."

Zacharia then spends most of the rest of her article detailing horror stories of travelers who were singled out for special screening:

Vancouver is about as far as you can get from the Middle East without bumping into penguins.

Yet this month, students at the University of British Columbia are getting a little taste of Hamas thuggery right on their own campus.

All UBC students pay a small fee to support student activities. One of the groups receiving the money has proposed donating $700 to a new Gaza flotilla: an attempt to deliver aid directly to Hamas (widely recognized as a terrorist group), bypassing Israeli inspections.

The UBC student group that oversees student funds did the responsible thing, and put a temporary stop to the Hamas donation, pending a vote by the full student council.

The pro-Hamas students have reacted with a campaign of abuse and intimidation against the student who made the responsible decision, UBC Alma Mater Society president Bijan Ahmadian. Ahmadian tweeted on Thursday: “Shaken from the physical intimidation by the SPHR President at my office today. Had to call security to remove him.” SPHR is the acronym for “Solidarity with Palestinian Human Rights, a UBC student group.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

For a Jewish community on the “Edge of the Diaspora”, to use the title of Suzanne Rutland’s history, that of Australia has produced more than its fair share of titans. Among its native-born sons have been such internationally-known figures as philosopher Samuel Alexander, composer Arthur Benjamin, First World War commander-in-chief General Sir John Monash, and two governors-general, Sir Isaac Isaacs and Sir Zelman Cowen. The community’s overseas-born sons have included Lieutenant-Colonel Eliezer Margolin, renowned for his service in Eretz Israel, German refugee Rabbi Herman Sanger, considered by his contemporary Sir Robert Menzies – no mean orator himself – to have been the greatest public speaker in the country, international jurist Julius Stone, who wrote, inter alia, on the Israel-Arab dispute, and a host of outstanding post-war communal activists of Eastern European background (including the grandparents of a certain Mark Regev), who turned a small and shrinking “Anglo” Jewish community threatened with extinction through apathy and intermarriage into the vibrant one that exists today.

For a quarter of a century, until he made aliya in 1999, the dominant communal leader in Australia was Antwerp-born Isi Leibler (pictured), who grew up in that country from the age of five. Having obtained a first-class honours degree in political science from the University of Melbourne, he embarked on a doctorate with the intention of becoming an academic or diplomat, but the early death of his father compelled him to take over the running of the family diamond business, and he subsequently headed his own renowned travel company, Jetset Tours.

Hard on the heels of a comprehensive opinion survey showing that most Palestinians support a two-state solution only as a stepping stone to a one state solution after Israel has been destroyed, and of a Palestinian Authority report denying any Jewish connection to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, we now have the third emphatic statement of Palestinian rejection of peace and its pre-requisites in under two weeks, this time from the Fatah Revolutionary Council.

Yesterday, the Council stated its implacable opposition to recognising Israel as a Jewish state, as well as to a peace agreement involving land swaps. The first issue is critical; the second important. If Palestinians will not recognise Israel as a Jewish state the conflict cannot come to an end since, as the afore mentioned opinion polls show, Palestinian society will only view any agreement as a temporary measure until the conflict can be resumed on more fabourable terms at a later date. If they reject a priori the possibility of land swaps they are effectively saying there is nothing to talk about on border questions, in which case what is the point of negotiations in the first place?

The Jerusalem Post quoted an Israeli government official as saying the following in response to the Fatah announcement: “I would ask the Palestinians the following question: If the Jewish state is fundamentally illegitimate in your eyes, what sort of peace are you offering us? “It is clear that their refusal to recognize the Jewish state’s legitimacy is the true obstacle to peace and reconciliation.” Indeed so. It is crystal clear. But only to those people who are aware of the facts. So let’s have a look at how these vitally important pieces of information have been reported on by the BBC.

As I wrote last week, the U.S. version of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been a resounding failure since its inception. Even the most radical college campuses have ignored its calls to divest from Israel.

Apparently realizing that traditional boycotts haven’t caught on, some BDS activists at Princeton University have launched a new campaign to increase “consumer choice” in the college food court. They say they want to expand the number of hummus brands sold on campus, arguing that the current product, Sabra, supports “crimes” against Palestinians:

The Princeton Committee on Palestine has sponsored a referendum in next week’s USG elections that asks Dining Services to sell an alternative to Sabra hummus in all its retail locations on campus.

PCP started a petition in support of the referendum last Thursday. More than 200 students have signed it, the threshold for getting a referendum on the ballot.

Humanitarian dilemmas are a recurring issue in the Judea and Samaria region. A terrorist fires at IDF soldiers, is shot and gets wounded. Is an IDF medic to be called to treat him? A building is about to collapse in the heart of Ramallah. Does the IDF enter? Does it jeopardize its soldiers’ lives, or does it call the International Red Cross and risk losing precious time?

To Israel, the answer to these questions is clear. According to Division Medical Officer, Lt. Col. Michael Kassirer, “The treatment of the Palestinian population is first and foremost a moral and professional obligation for every one of us.”

A conference on the topic of humanitarian medicine was held on Monday (Nov. 22), at Hadassah Medical Center at Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.

“Until September 2000, a Ramallah resident could have taken his car and driven to Ichilov Hospital [in Israel],” began Commander of Judea and Samaria Division, Brig. Gen. Nitzan Alon. “But from September 2000 we’ve been in a state of terror. Hundreds were killed, Jews and Palestinians alike. The battles took place in the heart of the cities, in places where enemies stood side by side with civilians, with difficult conditions and limited ability to evacuate. We could not practice medicine beyond the minimum. In those days, we were on the verge of a humanitarian crisis.”

A dual alert has woken me from my turkey-and-headcold-induced stupor to help spread the word about Buy Israeli Goods (BIG) Day, this Tuesday November 30. The brainchild of the ever-creative StandWithUs organization and the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce, BIG Day is designed to bring the successful Canadian Buycott concept to counter the umpteenth attempted boycott of Ahava cosmetics, also scheduled for the 30th.

While not normally a big advocate for holiday consumption (or a big fan of matter, generally), on this one occasion I urge folks to buy, Buy, BUY! Spend money! Purchase stuff! As long as it’s Israeli and please don’t hesitate to continue the habit after November 30.

El Al, Israel’s national carrier, reported spending $107,828,000 on security in 2009 for the 1.9 million passengers it carried. That works out to about $56.75 per passenger. The United States, by contrast, spent $5.33 billion on aviation security in fiscal 2010, and the air travel system handled 769.6 million passengers in 2009 (a low year), according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That amounts to $6.93 per passenger.

Hmm, you get what you pay for, apparently. Milbank’s point is that the overall cost would be astronomical, while IsraelMatzav says that passengers could simply be asked to pay an extra $50 or so per ticket. Two ways of looking at the same number.

A group of graffiti artists from the New York City area is here in Israel this week painting up a storm. They were here once before in November, and painted bomb shelters in Sderot and the like. This trip, they're spending a lot of time in Ariel, where they are trying to counteract the artists' boycott of the new theater there.

An international group of graffiti artists are in Ariel to break what they call "an artistic siege" against the approximately 18,000 residents, in the midst of the national debate over Ariel's new cultural center. "Graffiti writers are used to making art where people tell them not to," says Craig Dershowitz, executive director of the New York group, Artists 4 Israel, which organized the trip.

Israeli NGOs horrified by the developing humanitarian crisis in Ireland have organized a flotilla called Viva Dublina. A spokesman for Viva Dublina said: “We are horrified by the developing humanitarian crisis in Ireland!” Viva Dublina has been loaned one of the world’s largest luxury cruise liners by an Israeli shipping mogul to act as a flotilla from Ashdod to Dublin. The mogul wrote a letter to Ha’aretz saying: “I am horrified by the developing humanitarian crisis in Ireland!” The ship will be used to return the useless junk and out of date medications sent on flotillas manned by anti-Israeli Irish activists that are currently clogging the warehouses in Ashdod after Hamas refused to accept the “donations”. Egypt has asked if the flotilla can stop in El Arish to take similar “donations” that are clogging the warehouses there. Egypt says it prefers to use its warehouses to store kassam rocket parts and Mercedes-Benz sedans for Hamas.

Approximately 800 foreign correspondents currently based in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem who are horrified by the developing humanitarian crisis in Ireland will be offered accommodation on board at special rates, tips included, for the cruise. The ship will be renamed “Danny Boy” for the trip. A 10 year-old Druze girl from Daliyat el-Carmel has said she hacked the ship’s IT system with a virus she calls “Sucksnet” and programmed the ship’s siren to play “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” in an effort to cheer the Irish up when the ship pulls into Dublin Harbor.

Ali Abunimah is a dedicated anti-Israel activist. His website, Electronic Intifada, is widely read (US traffic rank around 106,000) and linked to (more than 2000 sites). Abunimah gives speeches, appears on panels and is often quoted on the radio. He claims to have met Barack Obama numerous times, and is responsible for this notable quote:

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat [Chicago, 2004], I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.” He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, “Keep up the good work!” — Ali Abunimah

By the “3D test” of Natan Sharansky — Demonization, Double Standards, Delegitimization — or by the European Union’s working definition of antisemitism, Abunimah’s website and many of his remarks are antisemitic. Here is what NGO Monitor wrote about Electronic Intifada:

…the organization known as Electronic Intifada is very active in BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] efforts, routinely abusing terms like “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.” Nigel Parry, a cofounder of EI, conflates victims of terror with terror leaders, and justifies Palestinian mortars fired into Israeli settlements by stating: “The dilemma in which the Palestinians find themselves is like that of a man who, falsely imprisoned for most of his life and demonized by society, finds himself in a dark room being raped by a highly decorated prison guard, when… he suddenly notices a rocket launcher lying within reach.” Parry also compared Israel’s targeted killing of Hamas head Ahmed Yassin to a “bus bombing.”

EI’s other founder, Ali Abunimah, who appears on many campuses to promote BDS, calls for a one-state solution, meaning the elimination of Israel. Abunimah also compares Israel to Nazi Germany, referring to the Israeli press as “Der Sturmer.”

All this activity is expensive. Where does the money come from? Surprisingly (or not), a great deal of it comes from a Western liberal democracy:

On September 30, 2000, Charles Enderlin, the Israel bureau chief of the France 2 television network, received an urgent call from his cameraman. It was the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada, and Talal Abu Rahma claimed to be filming a firefight between Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza strip. He sent Enderlin footage of a panicked young boy caught and killed in the crossfire as his father tried in vain to protect him from Israeli troops, whom Rahma accused of purposely targeting the defenseless pair. Enderlin added a voiceover grimly narrating the boy’s death and hurried the footage to France 2.

The disturbing video circled the world faster than you can say “blood libel” and aroused international condemnation of Israel. Images of the atrocity immediately achieved iconic status as confirmation of Israeli brutality and Palestinian victimhood. It inflamed the intifada, which left thousands dead. Bin Laden even referred to the boy’s death in a taped warning to America, and the now-familiar image of the al Duras under fire appeared in the background of the videotaped beheading of Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl. Streets, parks, youth camps, and public buildings have been named in Mohammed al Dura’s honor. His image adorns stamps and monuments.

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About Me

I visited Hevron in November 2000 after the outbreak of the Rosh Hashanah War to see what could be done to assist in the face of the growing daily attacks on the community. After returning to work for the community in the summer of 2001, a bond and a love was forged that grows to this day. My wife Melody and I merited to be married at Ma'arat HaMachpela and now host visitors from throughout the world every Shabbat as well as during the week. Our goal, "Time to come Home!"